Posted on 11/05/2014 9:11:15 AM PST by right-wing agnostic
The 2014 election was a successful one for marijuana legalization. Referendum initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana passed in Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia. Florida’s legalization amendment (which was limited to medical marijuana) failed, but only because victory required a 60% supermajority (it got just over 57% percent). A medical marijuana initiative did pass in the Pacific island territory of Guam.
Coming on the heels of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington in 2012, this is a further sign of pro-legalization momentum, and perhaps of dissatisfaction with the War on Drugs more generally – even among some conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Here we go again. Comparing the several thousand year old societal history and acceptance of Alcohol with the very short American history of Marijuana abuse.
Once again, your argument devolves down to: "Waaaaaaaaahhh!!!! They get Alcohol!!!! I want my WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!!!!
The bulk of it certainly is, else you wouldn't need Mexican drug gangs sneaking it over the border for you.
We care very much, but the abuses of our rights are a separate question from the need to keep drugs from doing to our nation what they did to China.
The Drug laws are being used as an excuse to enlarge government power, but so is air pollution, education, "gay" rights, Global warming, and so on.
EVERYTHING is being used to expand and increase government power, and by focusing on the single example of the drug war, you are missing the bigger picture and the threat that it comprises.
Rational people recognize that there is a specific quantity of government which is necessary to guarantee societal freedom. We must have a common defense. We must have common justice. Government is the only manner in which this may be accomplished.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The conservative recognizes that we need some government, unlike the Liberal socialist who thinks we need total government, or the Libertarian kooks who think we need none at all.
No, it's not a separate question at all. The two are inevitably intertwined.
And your beef with China is opium. Marijuana is not opium.
EVERYTHING is being used to expand and increase government power, and by focusing on the single example of the drug war, you are missing the bigger picture and the threat that it comprises.
No, I'm concerned about the rest, too. But this thread is about marijuana legalization.
No. The 'that' in your 'that is the "let's destroy society because we only have our own short little lifetime of experience to call on" Libertarian position' was HIS text ... as I indicated but you buffoonishly misunderstood (or perhaps are deliberately misrepresenting).
There is nothing conservative about introducing a poison into society.
That introduction was made decades ago.
New people are introduced to these dangerous substances every day of the week.
That's not "introducing into society" - squirming away from your previous silly characterization, eh?
it is people like you who are seriously wrecking people's lives because you insist on making it easier for more people to make contact with this crap.
I insist on treating my fellow citizens like adults; it is people like you who are seriously wrecking people's lives because you insist on enriching criminals and removing marijuana from effective regulation (such as age limits).
Giving adult humans addictive drugs is little different from giving loaded guns to children. Neither understands or appreciates the horrible injury such a thing is capable of rendering upon them.
It is a reprehensible idea that we should let innocent victims destroy their lives because we chose not to put up warnings and barriers to this pit.
How does Party A's use or even abuse of intoxicants infringe on the freedoms and liberties of their neighbors or communities? (Spouses and children is a valid point - for those users who have them and who use to the point of neglecting their obligations.)
Illegal pot bears no warnings - legal tobacco does.
False choice fallacy. No, I would rather *NOT* spend billions of dollars every year on the war on drugs, but bad and stupid people make it necessary. As for taking away the rights of the majority, I say again that is occurring on all fronts of government, and is not the sole province of the necessary effort to stop poison from killing people.
I will point out that Singapore has far less drug use, at a far less cost. They solve the problem by killing the drug dealers. Our problem is this. Though we keep calling it a "War", we never fight it like it's an actual war.
If the drug production facilities in Columbia and Afghanistan were reduced to smoking piles of ashes, then we could be making the argument that we are fighting it as a "war."
Banning Cocaine? How is this going to work if the adjacent state doesn't? I point out to you how this same idea is working in New York as regarding their cigarette taxes.
It isn't.
Beyond that, it ignores the fact that much if not most drug production involves foreign nations, which is the sole domain of the Federal government.
With regard to the War on Drugs, your "specific quantity of government" has resulted in:
* Asset forfeiture with no finding of guilt
* The PATRIOT ACT being used far more for drugs than anything terrorism-related
* A prison system that incarcerates more people per capita than any other country on the planet
* Drug/narcotics checkpoints
And, of course, no knock raids, police corruption, increased organized crime and a whole host of other things courtesy of a "specific quantity of government".
Meanwhile, illegal drugs are every bit as available and cheap as they have always been since the farcical War On Drugs was announced.
When will clear-thinking people admit this has been a 100% failure?
Comparing the several thousand year old societal history and acceptance of Alcohol with the very short American history of Marijuana abuse.
Obviously not, just noting that neither one is heroin. Manipulating quotes - pretty low class tactic, that.
It's the difference between strychnine and arsenic. One just kills you more slowly is all.
Apart from that, the philosophical underpinnings of marijuana legalization are open ended. As with "Gay" Marriage, if you accept those principles, you will have no defense against more offensive things which will be coming later. (Polygamy, Incest, and lowering age of consent, or in the case of drugs, Crack, Meth, and Heroine.)
Marijuana is just the key to unlocking this door.
The bulk of it certainly is, else you wouldn't need Mexican drug gangs sneaking it over the border for you.
All use of illegally obtained substances is intrinsically "intemperate"? Including a guy smoking a smuggled Cuban cigar?
I guess once marijuana is legal and not smuggled, its use will no longer be intemperate - sounds like an argument for legalization to me.
The bulk of it certainly is, else you wouldn't need Mexican drug gangs sneaking it over the border for you.
All use of illegally obtained substances is intrinsically "intemperate"? Including a guy smoking a smuggled Cuban cigar?
I guess once marijuana is legal and not smuggled, its use will no longer be intemperate - sounds like an argument for legalization to me.
Nobody ever died from the proximate cause of smoking too much pot (unlike the toxic legal drug alcohol).
Drug Usage in the US is about 2% currently. By 1900 in China, in the province of Manchuria, it was about 50% of the population.
Even accepting your seriously deluded argument as fact, you are bitching about ruining the lives of 2% of the population in favor of a policy which will ruin the lives of 50% of the population.
Do you not understand simple math? 2%<50%, and by a factor of 25.
So on what planet is 25 times the damage an improvement? (Not to mention the 100 Million people murdered as a result of the COLLAPSE of Chinese Society.)
It is these types of Reefer Madness-type statements that cause pro WOD/Big Government folks such as yourself to lose credibility and not be taken seriously.
There's a legitimate debate to be had. But not when one side breathlessly exclaims that marijuana kills people.
When you do that, tens of millions of Americans who have managed to use marijuana without killing their spouses, gunning down their children or drive into crowded shopping malls tune you out.
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